MoE to make out-of-cycle salary payments to new teachers this month

Minister of Education Fayval Williams says an out-of-cycle payment is to be made this month to ensure the 1,155 new teachers who joined the education sector recently receive their salaries in September.

Williams noted that with the sudden resignation of scores of teachers and the subsequent employment of new teachers at very short notice, the ministry has had to implement new mechanisms to ensure the teachers are paid in the month of September.

Under normal circumstances, for a teacher to be paid in a particular month, the employment documents must be submitted by the last working day of the previous month.

“For example, to be paid in September, all relevant employment documents must be submitted to the ministry by the last working day in the month of August. However, given that many of the new teachers were employed this month, the ministry extended the deadline for submission to September 12 and deployed the accounting staff to work overtime and on weekends to process the submissions," Williams explained.

Williams said the ministry received a total of 782 new teachers' files on or before the September 12, 2023 deadline.

She said, of this total, 624 new teachers' files were processed and 158 new teachers' files were deemed incomplete because they did not meet the required standard to enable payment.

Williams highlighted that 373 new teachers' files were submitted after the extended deadline of September 12.

“Given the importance of salary payment to our teachers, the ministry will do an out-of-cycle payroll during the last week of September to ensure that the 373 new teachers' files that were received late (after September 12), the 158 new teachers with incomplete files and any other submissions that are sent to the Ministry by September 25 are processed once all required payment documents are submitted,” Williams added.

Williams advised that the Accountant General's office confirmed that the payroll process has already started with $2 billion already released into the accounts of bursar-paid schools.

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